Calls for 100Mbps broadband likely to go unheard… this year

The Fiber-to-the-home Council calls on Congress to back 100Mbps symmetrical …

Covering US broadband "policy" is a bit like digging a trench, in the rain, with your bare hands—sure, you don't get mud jammed up under your fingernails, but it's not much more enjoyable. That's because the US broadband strategy is not to have a strategy. Not only will the market's invisible hand dig those trenches for us, and then lay down the necessary wiring (thanks, ghostly fingers!), but it will ensure that speeds shoot ever upward, and US broadband is the envy of the world. Not only should the government butt out of the process, it shouldn't even set aspirational goals.

How has this plan been working out? According to the Communications Workers of America and the Fiber-to-the-Home Council, not real well. This week, they called on Congress to pass a pair of resolutions that would set national goals, and come up with at least some plan for attaining speeds of 100Mbps (symmetrically) by 2015.

The resolutions in questions are H.Res.1292 and S.Res.191. Both call for the same thing: a baseline goal of universal, symmetrical 10Mbps access by 2010, increasing to 100Mbps in five more years. The resolution also asks relevant Congressional committees to talk with the President, and develop a plan by the end of 2009 to actually make the idea a reality.

Much of the US remains far from these goals as 2008 winds down. The Communication Workers of America's 2008 study on broadband speeds shows, for instance, that Ars' home state of Illinois has tested median download speeds of 2.5Mbps this year, with an abysmal upload speed of 485Kbps. And numerous rural counties in the state get less than 700Kbps down.

Half the states in the US are doing worse even than this, though Rhode Island takes the top spot at 6.7Mbps. As reports have indicated, this isn't good enough to keep us from falling behind the rest of the world.

Getting to symmetrical 10Mbps connections, whether through market forces or government intervention, looks unlikely in the next 18 months. Verizon FiOS customers can do it, and those whose cable companies roll out DOCSIS 3.0 should get closer to the goal (uploads might still be an issue, but download speeds should rise quickly), while most DSL users will have trouble getting to 10Mbps for either uploads or downloads. Even AT&T, which is rolling out an expensive fiber-to-the-node upgrade, plans to use most of the bandwidth to deliver its IPTV service, U-verse, and it will have little headroom to boost Internet speeds without stringing fiber to the home.

Getting to 100Mbps is clearly in the interests of the FTTH council, as fiber is necessary for most such deployments (even cable companies deploying DOCSIS 3.0 generally use a hybrid fiber-coax system to make those speeds possible). But getting it done with Congress' help is unlikely this year, not least because—as you perhaps have heard—Congress is scheduled to wrap up today and has a couple of other small matters to work out.

Next year?

Nothing will happen this year. If you're the cynical type, you might single out the telecom lobbyists who work hard to kill such measures.

President Bush hasn't made a speech or issued a single press release on tech policy since 2004, clearly indicating its low-priority status for his administration. But these ideas could meet with more success next year. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), for instance, was the sole cosponsor of the Senate resolution discussed above and has made broadband upgrades a centerpiece of his tech plan. And a Democratic-led FCC might well be open to taking more of a leadership role with such issues.

It's less clear how a McCain administration would handle broadband issues, though discussion with campaign surrogates shows that the focus remains on a light regulatory touch, open markets, and promoting private investment.